In particular within the framework of safety-critical robot applications, it is known to define protected zones, for example in a world coordinate system, into which the robot must not enter with parts or reference points such as its TCP. If a zone violation is detected, the robot is safely stopped.
But as that happens, the robot can penetrate still further into the protected zone due to its mass inertia and the time delays and inertia between the violation of the zone and the response of the monitoring system.
DE 10 2008 013 431 A1 proposes to determine the maximum available delay time on the basis of the distance of a detected person and the working zone of a machine and the average walking speed of the person, and to choose the braking profile accordingly, in order to stop the machine before the person is exposed to danger. The associated person detection system is very expensive, however.
The object of the present invention is to improve the operation of manipulators.